Tree Farming is the core mechanic of Forestry. With Forestry you are able to completely automate the creation of Tree Farms. By using Humus and saplings, as well as optionally Catalyst to speed the process up, you will never again swing an axe. Simply place a Arboretum in a well lit area and watch as it automatically clears out the required area for your farm and lay down Humus and saplings. Add a Logger to your farm and it will automatically cut down your trees as well as collect saplings and apples. Finally you can use a Forester to kick your farm into overdrive by using Catalyst to instantly grow your trees.

When you place an Arboretum, it will start to clear out the farm area. The farm area currently is a hollow column with a dimension 13x13x10 (X-Y-Z) blocks and 3 blocks wide with the Arboretum itself at the center of the ground level. Completely ignores the center 7x7 area in the middle. It will idle until it receives the right materials to start the farm. You will need to supply it with Humus and Saplings. Both materials can be either placed directly into its storage or be supplied by BuildCraft pipes. After receiving Humus it will lay down the soil. When this is finished, it will start to plant saplings. The arboretum will replace any missing sapling / tree and any degraded soil. If it cannot replace degraded soil because of a lack of Humus, it will also stop planting trees.

The Logger does what it's name implies. Its area of operations is 21x10x21 (X-Y-Z), with the base of any tree harvested being no higher than 10 but will harvest to the top of the tree. As a side operation, the Logger does also pick up any saplings and apples that drop in its area. Harvested materials are auto ejected into connected Buildcraft Pipes or placed into adjacent chests. If using Pipes, Saplings and Apples are only ejected into a pipe on top or bottom of the Logger.